You asked for a more customizable feed, and earlier this year, LinkedIn gave it to you.
The benefits of these changes aren’t limited to your user experience. They allow you to better manage your network, engage with prospects and clients, expand your professional knowledge, and build a better career for yourself.
That’s a lot potential impact, and it underscores the importance of managing your LinkedIn feed preferences to get the most from every minute spent on the platform. We’ve assembled a list of LinkedIn feed customization tips based on how other marketing and sales professionals approach their feeds. Check out their LinkedIn feed management advice and, if you like what you hear, apply it to your own feed.
Choose Your Follows Wisely
This has always been an important piece of advice, but it bears repeating now that LinkedIn’s feed has been updated. Users shouldn’t choose to follow people or companies too casually or treat follows like benign social interactions.
The content shared by the individuals and companies you follow appears in your feed daily. You want this content to offer value: Updates on industry trends, educational resources from successful marketers, thought leadership from industry experts, thought-provoking dialogue with peers, and so forth.
“We’ve seen a dynamic shift in what our feeds look/feel like. I sum it up in one word: Clutter. We’re now completely inundated with content!” - Mike Kresch
Why leave room in your feed for content that offers no value if you don’t have to? Steer clear of accounts that share irrelevant content. Before following a person or company, look through their recent activity to see if they consistently provide content you care about.
As Mike Kresch notes, we are oversaturated with content, and much of it isn’t worth our time. LinkedIn recommends keeping your list of follows to around 50 sources, so choose wisely.
The Best of Both Worlds: Connect and Unfollow
Sometimes you want to make a new connection but you’re not interested in the status updates that will inevitably ensue. Excessive, irrelevant posting, while more pervasive on some networks than others, is a fact of life on all social media.
Fortunately, there’s a new option on LinkedIn: When you value a connection but not their social activity, you can choose to unfollow them while keeping them in your network. As Lewi Watkins writes, you have full control of your LinkedIn feed fate.
“Well my LinkedIn friends, I am here to tell you this. Your newsfeed is rubbish, because of YOU.” - Lewi Watkins
Itching to unfollow? This video tutorial shows you how to stay connected to certain connections but stop seeing their posts:
Trimming the fat from your feed will help you stay on top of the content that matters most to you and your career.
Join the Conversation
You already know that regular engagement on the LinkedIn feed is good for your visibility and your professional profile. The feed’s recent updates make this engagement much easier, in part because you can cut through the noise to view a concentrated, relevant body of content.
Engagement doesn’t take much effort, which is why every marketer and salesperson should do it. From liking to sharing to participating in discussions to responding to a connection’s solicitations for help, it’s easy to interact with your connections and follows.
“Connect with your clients and prospects on LinkedIn and monitor their updates. When they post something you feel you can talk about, ask them a question or give them feedback on their update.” – Shane Gibson
As Shane Gibson points out, simple content engagement is a great way to demonstrate your expertise and thought leadership to current clients, prospective clients, and other interested parties who may not know about you, but should. Consistent engagement in social conversation is great for your own personal visibility and can open doors you didn’t know were there.
Make Meaningful Introductions
Marketers have plenty of reason to follow current clients as well as prospects they are targeting. Keeping up with their content on LinkedIn can be a great way to start conversations that lead to other opportunities.
In addition to engaging with other people’s shared content, be vigilant for opportunities where content can be a launching pad to engagement outside of a public forum. According to relationship management expert Kristy Shimkus, content discovered in the LinkedIn feed can help you personalize private outreach sent through email or InMail.
“Always personalize your outreach, keep it short, simplify your value proposition, and end with a clear call to action. Your goal of an InMail is simply to earn the right to have a discussion.” - Kristy Shimkus
Regular engagement helps you remain top-of-mind among the people who matter most to you and your company.
Hide Content That Isn’t Relevant to Improve Your Feed Over Time
Sometimes a trusted connection or company shares content that is of little use. We all do it; it’s not an unforgivable crime.
But it doesn’t mean we need to let this type of content clutter our feed, no matter how infrequent. LinkedIn has made it easy to hide posts that you don’t find helpful or interesting.
“As someone who works in social media and has been fortunate to have the opportunity to have my writing appear on some desirable platforms, it is very easy to fall into the trap of believing that everything we say is worth hearing regardless of context.” - Shane Paul Neil
Content strategist Shane Paul Neil has outlined a number of guidelines to help professionals keep their content and messaging on-point and relevant. But where that fails, LinkedIn users can now easily opt to hide the post by tapping a button in the upper-right-hand corner, as demonstrated in the video below:
In addition to the short-term benefit of removing the post from your sight, hiding content also helps LinkedIn’s algorithm get a better sense of the content you like and dislike. Over time, hiding posts will help your feed do a better job of showing updates that best match your interests.
Your LinkedIn feed is ripe with potential. Use these LinkedIn feed customization tips to maximize every minute you invest on the world’s largest professional network.
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